Back To the Stone Age? New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Bans Working From Home

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has decreed there will be no more working from home for Yahoo staff. A company memo leaked to the press on Friday announced that Yahoo employees would no longer be permitted to work remotely. The decision seems to be based on a desire for increased productivity and a more connected company culture. It reads in part:

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.

Hundreds of remote workers were asked to report to the office beginning June 1. If they can’t or don't want to, too bad. Even occasional flexibility is being discouraged. The memo reads, "For the rest of us who occasionally have to stay home for the cable guy, please use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration."

Unsurprisingly, the announcement rankled quite a few Yahoo employees, as well as supporters of workplace flexibility. Flexible work arrangements, from telecommuting to flexible schedules and condensed workweeks, are viewed by many as the way of the future. Flexibility has become an important tool for time-crunched workers, particularly parents, to better juggle work and family responsibilities.

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"It's incredibly disappointing," says Jennifer Owens, editorial director of Working Mother Media. "It's a step backwards—a mindset from the days when Yahoo was launched."

"I respect that Marissa is looking at ways to make [Yahoo's] workforce more productive and engaged in their jobs," says Sara Sutton Fell, CEO of FlexJobs, a service that helps job seekers find flexible professional positions. "I just don’t agree that casting a blanket of blame on individual telecommuters is the right way to do it--nor is cancelling the whole program in one fell swoop."

Mayer, 37, took the helm of struggling Yahoo last summer while five months pregnant. The new mom is the youngest CEO and one of only a handful of women CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies. When asked for details about the new policy and the rationale behind it, a Yahoo spokesperson wrote back, "We don't comment on internal matters."

Update: A Yahoo spokesperson sent the following statement on Tuesday, "This isn't a broad industry view on working from home--this is about what's right for Yahoo, right now."

Mayer has so far taken a number of steps to turn the company around—revamping the homepage, renovating Yahoo Mail, releasing a new Flickr app and conducting a string of mobile acquisitions. Presumably she believes having all soldiers report for duty onsite will lead to increased performance. However, the idea that traditional face-time results in increased productivity seems little more than management bias.

"A variety of studies show that telecommuting and working from home is associated with higher productivity," says David Lewin, management professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Analytically, it's not at all clear this would benefit Yahoo. They could wind up with negative performance effects."

Additionally, working from home—whether occasionally or full time—typically cuts out an hour or more of wasted commuting time every day, says Lewin. Not to mention, employees are so grateful for the flexibility that they're often more loyal to the company than the 9-to-5ers. A 2011 study by nonprofit human resources association WorldatWork found that companies with stronger cultures of flexibility experienced lower turnover and increased employee satisfaction, motivation and engagement.

"It comes from fear," says Owens. "Fear that if I can't see you, I don't know what you're working on. It's a distrust of your own workforce."

Some are also speculating that Mayer's little ultimatum may be a way to trim the fat. If remote workers decide to quit rather than comply, it's a layoff without the associated costs. However, what could be a clever cost-cutting trick sends a dangerous message to the rest of the business community. Could this be the beginning of the end of telecommuting?

"I don’t believe we’ll see many other companies following suit," says Amanda Augustine, job search expert for TheLadders, an online job-matching service for professionals. "This decision says more about the type of company (and culture) Mayer is planning to rebuild, and less about the state of telecommuting and flexible work schedules as a whole."

Of course, some face-time will always be necessary and no one's arguing that it disappear entirely. David Fagiano, COO of corporate training and consulting company Dale Carnegie Training, agrees with Mayer that some of the best ideas are fostered through casual conversations. However, he also notes that these conversations don't have to take place in the same room. "With the internet being such a great tool in business today, it's easy to hold a virtual meeting via Skype or to pick up the phone."

With increasingly effective mobile and video conferencing technology there's less and less need to be present in the physical workplace. Certainly, Yahoo could find alternatives to alienating hundreds of workers. Isn’t it a technology company?